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Michael Jones has been charged with child abuse, aggravated battery and aggravated assault, but prosecutors said those charges could be the tip of the iceberg.

The case against Jones involves a 7-year-old boy known as AJ that police believe has been missing since summer. Sources said the boy may have been beaten to death and then fed to hogs on Jones’s property in an effort to cover up the crime. Investigators said they’re looking into whether the hogs were purchased for that reason.

Human remains were recovered on the property last week, but police said they have not been positively identified.

Police went to the home on North 99th Street in Kansas City, Kansas, on Wednesday to answer a domestic dispute call. They said they soon learned that AJ had been missing for some time and might be dead.

Investigators later returned to the junk-littered property with a search warrant where they found badly decomposed remains.

Gorman said the case has been a tough one for officers to deal with. He compared it to the 2001 investigation of Mark Sappington, who killed his victims, chopped them up and ate one of them.

“I kind of parallel it to that,” Gorman said. “That was a difficult case to prosecute. This is probably the worst I’ve seen since then.”

Gorman said more tests are needed to confirm whether the remains found last week are that of the missing boy.